Color-Brave at the Paine Art Center & Gardens

Above, photographer Colleen Bies stands with Aaron Sherer, the executive director of the Paine Art Center and Gardens in front of the Color-Brave exhibit. The Color-Brave project was organized by Tracey Robertson and Fit Oshkosh. It opened in 2018 at the Paine before traveling to locations in Oshkosh, Appleton, and Fond du Lac.

The Color-Brave Photo Project: Black and Brown Faces, A New Narrative was created to shift some common stereotypes about people of color in Oshkosh, to explore the negative impacts these false narratives have on the entire community, and to celebrate black and brown residents.

For the project, each person was interviewed. First-person narratives accompany each portrait. They were written with the help of scholars to show that people of color do not all have the same experiences and to raise awareness about barriers they face. Wherever the exhibit went, hosts organized community conversations with humanities experts and FIT Oshkosh facilitators. This project was funded in part with a grant from Wisconsin Humanities.

• Read a news article about the project here.
• The Color-Brave photo gallery can be found here. Click on each photo to read the narrative.
• Buy a copy of the Color-Brave book here!  All proceeds go to support social justice work done by Wisconsin non-profits.
• The term Color-Brave comes from a TED talk given by Mellody Hobson in 2014. She says conversations about race can be very touchy, but that's exactly why we need to start talking about it. Watch the talk here.

Mushe Subulwa's Color-Brave Story

I am African, from Zambia. I first came to the US in 2006 to join my wife Angela at the University of Kansas, where she was finishing her PhD. I come from a place where I am in the majority, and where the beliefs of what it means to be an African—“ubuntu,” meaning “I am who I am because of us”—is instilled in us from the beginning. That’s very different from the individualistic society of America. It has taken me some time to fit in here, where it is not understood we all support each other.

We moved to Oshkosh in 2008. Before I even got a chance to know where black people live in the city, law enforcement visited me at my home. And it was not really nice. I was sitting on the porch, talking on the phone to my nephews and my mom back home, when police cruisers arrived. The police start yelling at me, “Put the phone down!” and “Do you have an ID?” After my wife calmed them down, they told us our neighbors called to say there was a black person here. It was that stereotype that all black people come to Oshkosh for drugs or to commit crimes.

My wife and I have two boys. In our neighborhood, there are lots of kids. They play. They leave their toys on the sidewalk. One day we hear this parent call her son to come home, and she tells him, “You better pick up all your stuff out there before those n-word kids steal it.” My son does not understand this. He is asking me what she is trying to say. I am having a hard time trying to explain to my son that he is perceived to be a thief because he is black.

Why should it be only our responsibility—us as people of color—to teach our children and our friends how to behave?

Photo by Colleen Bies. All the Color-Brave photos and stories can be found here.

Colleen: Purely by accident, when I was seventeen, I went to go see an army recruiter. I thought I was going to see a Peace Corps recruiter, but I was very, very wrong! When I came home from school that day, my dad inquired as to why I came home from school late. I started to tell him what happened, but I didn’t get to the punchline.

He began to say that I was a female. I was weak. I shouldn’t do anything. I shouldn’t strive for anything. The best thing that I could do was to get married and be a good wife and mom. Looking back, I don’t blame him. I don’t have any ill resentment towards him about that. For my father coming from the kind of world and environment that he came from, he did genuinely believe that the best kind of life I could have was to be a mom and a wife. It wasn’t necessarily that he was trying to insult me. He was trying to push what he thought was genuinely the best for me.  That all happened on a Monday, and by Wednesday, I was raising my right hand—swearing into the military. That has forever changed the trajectory of my life in the very best way possible. I would not be who I am today, if all of that didn’t happen.

They say there’s that one moment in your life that really changes everything. That was my one moment.

Read the whole story on Love Wisconsin, a digital storytelling project that celebrates our state, our lives, and our shared future.

Tracey: I had a friend who lived in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and my children and I would visit her all the time. When the time came to make a move, Oshkosh seemed like a place where I’d have some familiarity and support. It seemed the right place to go.